...that's what the reviewer wrote in Japanese. He also noted that it is remedied by either stepping down a little (he did not mention how little) or increasing the focus distance.

If you look at true macro lenses (1:1) you'll notice they are always prime (Canon, anyway) and never wide or super-fast. Why? Zoom is a pain even without super close minimum focusing distance. Fast with zoom is an even bigger pain. When we see some shots posted with the original RAW files maybe we can draw some conclusions. I haven't seen any RAW files yet and I don't think anyone has been terribly specific about what the camera's settiings are as far as JPEG processing. And the Mark II lens starts at 12.5mm! Holy crap! I would expect it to be extremely soft wide open and at wide angle, but it really is surprisingly good.

Either way, if you can stop the camera down and get sharp macros it would still be an amazing lens. Not only that, but were these macro shots done in stable conditions? I don't see any sign of motion blur, but I also see pictures that look great despite not being tack sharp like a stopped down 100mm f/2.8 IS. Everything I've seen makes the camera look like a killer. The extra zoom range, decent macro distance, fast lens, detail, and low noise are very promising.

The similar APS-C 15-85IS lens is soft for closeup shots at any aperture or focal length (especially outside the center), has strong field curvature and in general unpleasant bokeh - and it is 1-1.5 stops slower than the G1X Mk II lens. If the G1X II is really sharp for 'macro' stopped down it would be an improvement over the 15-85IS. But I'm not holding my breath, the lens looks like a clear compromise (acceptable to some, not acceptable to others); maybe the spec is just too ambitious.